Hanging From Your Family Tree
by RchHghr
Summary: One-shot. Sometimes you wish you could just hang yourself from your family tree. Sometimes, you just want to trim the branches to discover just who may be sitting there as well. Tonks and Malfoy discuss just what it means to be from the same tree.


Disclaimer: This is a one-shot of what I think an encounter of cousins would be like. Enjoy.

Everyone has those family members. Okay, there are two different categories: the ones who you have and they're fine. They love you and that's the family you grew up with and they will always be there for you.

Then there is the family, the other side where they don't like you, they don't know you; no wait, they don't even know you exist.

Okay, they know you were born, but that's about it.

I have that kind of family and it's because my mother, a Pure Blooded witch married a Wizard of a Muggle family. My name is Tonks and I am the offspring of them which puts me as half muggle, half witch, though it doesn't matter to me. But to my mother's family blood means everything. When she married the man, my father, they dropped her off the family tree like an apple from a tree.

It doesn't bother me because I didn't grow up with them, and then they dropped me. I just didn't have them. My mom talks about her sister's sometimes when I ask her, but the stories only stay in their childhood when they were growing up because that was the 'happy time' of her life with them. When they dropped her from their lives; well, there are no stories for that time.

I know my aunt has a son. Draco Malfoy. He is seven years younger than me. He is my cousin, but I don't think he even knows who I am.

Half the time no one knows who I am because of my Metamorphoses powers. I can take the shape of anyone I can think of.

But that doesn't matter. I don't know his character, except that he is very cocky; being born in a rich family where blood matters and the most powerful are the elite. He can be all about that, or he might now be. I don't know and I don't have to think that long because he is insight.

And alone.

On the docks of a small fishing town he sits alone. I don't know why he is here. I'm here because I enjoy the beach. Especially at dusk. When I am stressed with work and with life I walk the shore alone. The salt air, the sea breeze and the setting sun are all mine to think and figure out what I am going to do next and no one can interrupt me.

Maybe he thinks the same. Maybe he is stressed with life and needs time alone.

I don't know, but there is no other's around. If he can hold his ground with me, maybe there's still hope for 'our' families. I can show him his other aunt. I know the trouble will stir up, but we're family, and what is family without any dysfunction?

I roll up the sleeves to my cloak and jump onto the dock and walk toward him. The sea breeze blows against me and tosses my purple locks to the sides and out of my face.

He hears the clomp of my boots and turns and glares in my direction. I haven't even said one word and the look on his face is distaste. Am I hideous?

As I walk toward him still, the only sound my boots he turns back to the water slouched over. Does he know it's really bad for his back?

I stand about two feet away, a shadow over him because of the sun.

"Draco Malfoy."

He looks at me again. I contain a smile that I want to do because he has of the family features I see in my own mother.

"Can I sit down here?"

"Why?" he sneers. If he could, I bet he'd bark at me harshly like I see his father doing to those beneath him at the Ministry where I am an Auror.

"I want to talk to you? Is there something wrong with that?" My answer comes out calmly, like his distaste doesn't bother me. It doesn't because I didn't grow up in his environment. I have a family who are that, a family, not a cold home where family is the blood through your veins.

"Yes, a lot is wrong with that." He says except this time it doesn't have the distaste it did before, and because it doesn't have that distaste I take it as an invite and sit down. I leave enough space between us.

"Well a lot can be wrong, but we are family and," I shrug my shoulders. Maybe he can finish the sentence.

"We are not family. If you look at the family tree there is no Nymphadora Tonks," he says and smirks.

Evil little child. No matter.

"If I was you I'd hang myself from that tree."

He wants to smirk, or chuckle or something. I see it in his eyes of darkness. It disappears fast but it was there. At least I know there is some kind of sense of humor in him; the way he takes the joke anyways.

"You know I am your cousin, right?"

He gives one nod and throws a rock into the water. I didn't see the small pile he had next to him.

"So we are family. Our mom's are sisters."

"Not anymore." He says. No thoughts go into his answers. They are brainwashed right into his head. In a way I feel sorry for the kid.

"You can't just stop being family with someone. It's not a game on the playground. Whether you want to think it or not I am your cousin forever."

"Crushing thought," he muses, but it's not as sarcastic as I wish it would be. I wish he'd just automatically open up with me, but I know that won't happen.

"Am I repulsive?" I ask suddenly. "Do you not like my hair? The minute I walked onto the dock you had a sneer on your features and I didn't even open my mouth. If it's the features I can change it."

My hair goes from lavender purple to a nice tree trunk brown and that's when I catch the awe and interest on his face. He cannot hide it and though he drops the fascination I know it's there and it makes me feel just a little bit better about this encounter.

"Yeah, I bet they didn't tell you, if they talked about me at all that I am a Metamorphmangus."

"They said something….."

Humor. Sarcasm. He is definitely like me.

"I don't want to know what they said. It doesn't matter to me. I've had family members who were there since I was born. I don't need the others who are against my mother, or my second cousin, Sirius Black."

His eyes widen.

"Yeah, I knew him. Great guy. Family too. Bet you didn't have any concept with him in life."

"Traitors have no place-"

"That's your mother and father talking, and whoever else filled your head with that garbage. I don't have money like you do, but I have love and care. If I was in trouble there are so many people I can count on from MY family who will be there to offer me a place and a shoulder to cry on. Can you say that?"

"Crying to someone is just weakness."

"But I have them there to cry to when life is just too hard. It doesn't matter about weakness. You have this cold, hard exterior and are fed so much trash to your head. If you had a dose of my reality you'd see the blood runs cold on your side."

"My side? There is no cold blood. Just the blood of a Pure family, the only kind there should be in our world."

"And you are proud of that?" I ask, apparently appalled and it shows on my face.

He nods.

I can't change his opinion or make him feel what I feel. But just to have a moment with a family member like him could be a start. I may never talk to my aunts, not that I would want to be in the same room as Bellatrix LeStrange again, but I can say I have a cousin.

Well to myself anyways.

"I have two different 'bloods' as you would think flowing through my veins but I am strong, confident and have a great job that helps people of our world. I may not be hanging from your family tree, but I'm sitting on the branch of another. You can sit on the same branch as I am. If not, you can at least sit under it. What do you say?"

"I don't sit on more than one branch." He says but there is a 'hanging point' where he doesn't say what else he wants to say.

"So is there a chance of another encounter with us?"

He gives one nod and throws another rock in the water.

So maybe there is a chance where we can 'break the cycle.' At least to ourselves anyways.


End file.
